Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by Tim F| 54 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Ya know, in James Bond film intros it’s Bond framed in the barrel of the gun. The blood belongs to the shooter, who gets drilled by Bond and dies. If I get the analogy right, Nancy Pelosi is James bond, the CIA tried to shoot her but she was too quick for them and they went down instead.
Um, ok.
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Desperate GOP Geniuses Make Moronic Misstep: Comparing Pelosi to Bond Character “Pussy Galore”…
by Deb Cupples | Frankly, I have problems with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), as I mentioned here and here. Still, it’s somewhere between absurd and stupid that Republican National Committee’s (RNC) marketing operatives intentionally put out…
Bill E Pilgrim
Well, you know art, culture, and satire aren’t their thing, they’re better in the realms of
finance,banking,investments,national security, erm,foreign relations,disaster relief?, uh, hang on…Calming Influence
But your fancy-pants AC (analogously correct) version would mean we wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of a gun at the Speaker of the House! So where’s the fun in that, huh?!?
Commie Fascist Atheislamic Liberals have no sense of humor.
jrg
Sure, that’s what the words said, but it was implied that Pelosi was shooting people that know the truth about ACORN and the Obama birth certificate conspiracy.
Sheesh, if you libtards took your head out of Bill Ayer’s ass and read memorandum every once in a while, smart people like me would not have to waste time explaining such thoughtful political commentary.
jl
I watched this whatever-it-is earlier today, and just watched it again. My judgment is that it is Fail.
Now, 62% of the public want some kind of investigation into Bush era torture, and the largest group, 38%, want to skip the throat clearing and just stone cold go to a criminal investigation. So, most people are not going to go into total shock that that some one is saying that the CIA might not be 100% honest about their role in the torture.
So, the Democrats Disloyal in Time of War theme might just piss people off.
Then there is the fact that we start to have the GOP on record that whatever it was, it was torture. That is nice. I like that. I want more ads like this, then.
Other than that, the ad is an excuse to dog whistle that women at high levels of power are c*nts, and maybe they should just step down and join the rest of the population, and lie back and enjoy it. I bet that will make women think again about the GOP, huh? However, I do not like that kind of message going out even by the GOP.
How did this Fail get on the intertubes and teevee? Well, I guess the Democrats are doing snarky ads with pop culture references, so the GOP, in its effort to be path breaking, new, and original again, felt the need to do a snarky ad with pop culture references. Too bad that reference is 40 years old. You have to get to hip before you get to retro hip, and I don’t think the GOP has found a shortcut.
I would say that this ad brings the GOP back to the future from the time of, about, say, 1962.
BTW, if Pelosi has some culpability in the torture, she should be held responsible in the same way that anyone else involved is held responsible. So I am one Democrat who just does judge the matter by what happens to a few big name Democrats.
John Cole
BTW- Taken is horrible. And I say that as someone who would watch anything with Famke Jansen.
Persia
It’s like they live in a world where women aren’t 50% of the voting population.
DougJ
It’s actually more like 54-56%.
jl
Just watched the TunchCam. I think that cat, which certain humans refer to as Tunch, is just not really ‘into’ that person who feeds it, named John Cole. Except, from what I read here, whenever it is pissed off about something and needs to rip some warm flesh to let off some steam.
Good luck pet shopping.
Bill E Pilgrim
@John Cole:
Agree on both counts. She’s barely in it anyway.
Stupid, gratuitously violent, idiotic drek.
I’m always surprised when people take Luc Besson seriously, in France he’s known as a joke to anyone with brains. I guess he wrote this one and didn’t direct it but, meh.
I’d also watch Liam Neeson do almost anything, but .. I guess not, in fact.
The torture and mass wasting of swarthy foreigners was particularly charming, you notice they didn’t even make them Russians, because that might risk them being too blond.
Bhall35
@John Cole
I was waiting for your reply re: Taken in the other thread, but needless to say I’m relieved you despised it as much as I did. Jansen was wasted, and I could go on all night about how bad it was, but I’ll leave you with a bit of Anthony Lane’s New Yorker review, and the link:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/02/02/090202crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=2
The rest is not as funny, but it is sobering to remember that the movie cleaned up at the box office.
jl
Maybe the GOP will do a Franky and Sammy Rat Pack themed add next. That would be cool. Bitter, misunderstood men who just like to party, high class hard likker, cigarettes, and bangable babes. And whatever that old saloon music was, that I never liked very much, no matter how amazingly well Sinatra sang it.
That would be a hoot, and break new ground.
I think we should send suggestions to the GOP for their next ads. They are almost bad enough to be funny, but are not quite there. They don’t seem to be able to ramp their stuff up into really hilariously funny-bad territory. And the reality based blogosphere can help them with that.
devopsych
Conservatism has always been about protecting the ruling class. Seriously, I fail to see how the Obama administration is any different.
geg6
Yeah, implying that Nancy Pelosi is just the same as a villian named Pussy is sure to bring those soccer/security moms running back to vote for GOP candidates. I mean, all women secretly want to be considered psycho killers and called by pejorative terms for their genitals, amirite girls? I know I just love it.
Persia
@DougJ: I was too lazy to look up the exact number, but thanks.
Ked
Ahem.
You know what this calls for…
Barry vs. Barack http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtH80EH_WhQ&feature=channel_page
asiangrrlMN
Gee, the GOP disses women? Who woulda thunk it?
@Bill E Pilgrim: I like your post very much.
Fake hubby! Are you out there?
Jeff
You don’t get it? It’s on account of “pussy” galore and on account of the Speaker is a notman. Get it now? But really, I thought it was pretty bad, even taken as rightist kitsch.
Yutsano
You know, between this and the “Daisy” knock-off, I think we can call the RNC officially entrenched in the latter half of the 20th Century now. Should we call that catching up fast?
Incertus
I really think the Republicans just don’t understand analogy or metaphor. That would explain a lot about their taste in movies, come to think of it.
And Tim, this is off topic, but have you seen PhD Comics? Just discovered them today.
Dennis-SGMM
@geg6:
The GOP’s outreach efforts will continue until they reach every c*nt, spic, wop, greaser, ni**er, mick, guinea, bohunk, raghead, slope, and kraut in this proud land.
And it’s off to the shower for me. My surname is Czech, our family is also Italian, German, Scotch-Irish and Mexican. My late dad, born in Cleveland in 1920, filled me in on the invective that was aimed at “foreigners” when he was growing up.
Violet
Holy cow, I just watched this for the first time. Yikes. TimF, you’re right – Nancy Pelosi is James Bond in this analogy. She’s in the center of the barrel in the opening scene. That’s Bond.
James Bond is whole point of the films. He’s the protagonist. The good guy. The one we’re pulling for. And they make Nancy Pelosi into James Bond and somehow that’s a bad thing?
I thought they were stupid before….
Nevermind the whole Nancy Pelosi, woman Speaker of the House, Pussy Galore subtext, which is awful and incredibly stupid (way to make those security moms feel comfortable). That’s awful and stupid and horribly -ist, but it pales in comparison to the idiocy of the entire setup.
They’re stupid. They’re every -ist in the book. And most -phobics too. It’s terribly entertaining to watch them crumble, and yet it’s very sad somehow.
When do we start the Whig Watch?
r€nato
I think the word you are looking for is *torture*.
Violet
Ah, blah. I got moderated. What word did I put in there that got trapped in moderation?
Notorious P.A.T.
I still don’t get what they’re trying to pinch Pelosi for. They don’t think torture is bad, but they think she’s bad for being briefed about torture and not doing anything about it? Is that their case? Idiots.
Bill E Pilgrim
@r€nato:
Well they weren’t really any good at that either, apparently.
Notorious P.A.T.
Probably the S-word.
soc
ial
ist
John Cole
@Violet: None of them lately have made any sense. The Daisy remake made no sense whatsoever.
But then again, these are the same guys who spent all their campaign energy last summer and millions of dollars trying to convince America that Obama’s popularity was a bad thing.
Someone said it best a couple weeks ago- the Republican party has gone dada. I can’t make any sense of what they are trying to accomplish. As DougJ has noticed, the conservative movement is now little more than a bizarre melange of enforced orthodoxies, cultural heresies, and abstract symbolism only understood by the insiders. They see a hamburger and it has a deep political meaning that encapsulates all that is wrong with Democrats or whatever the “other” of the day might be.
Meanwhile, the rest of us, not speaking the native tongue of the current GOP, are sitting around wondering just wtf is wrong with dijon mustard and tasty lettuce.
asiangrrlMN
I’m treating this as an open thread. I’m watching yesterday’s Maddow show, and she’s doing a segment on the scariness of O Fortuna. She says it scares her, so she can understand why the GOP uses it.
I don’t find the song scary at all. Does anyone?
asiangrrlMN
@Violet: Did you write s h o e s? That one gets you trapped, as well.
As for the ads, they make no fucking sense. That is all.
John Cole, you of all people should be able to interpret the GOP for the rest of us DFH! You were one of them.
jl
The leftys here are being too harsh. Clearly Bush derangement syndrome has been transferred to the GOP, and you kids should all go to your room for a timeout and just think about how mean hateful your attitude is.
The only problem is that whatever is not offensive about the ad, is incoherent, and whatever is not incoherent is lame. Other than that, the ad is just fine.
If you wanted to help, you should send them ideas. Something cutting edge -Monkees, Leave it to Beaver, What’s My Line? Or something like that.
Ked
@asiangrrlMN:
I tend to find Carmina Burana to generally be a celebration of life, but… O Fortuna is about how Fate can be wonderful or nasty. With the emphasis on nasty. But yeah, the music is basically dramatic, not scary.
burnspbesq
@asiangrrlMN:
It was only scary the first time I tried to sight-read it (I sang Carmina as a high school senior). After that, not so much. Carmina is a stone bitch to sing, but it is wayyyy too much fun.
Ninerdave
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Hey now, the Fifth Element is an awesome movie!
re: the topic at hand, the GOP “ad”, is it just me, or did the whole thing make absolutely no sense? I’ve watched it a couple of times and I still don’t get the point.
Dennis-SGMM
@jl:
You forgot “I’ve Got a Secret.”
asiangrrlMN
@burnspbesq: Ok, that does sound scary.
@Ked: I’m glad I’m not the only one unafraid of O Fortuna.
@Ninerdave: It’s just you. I kid, I kid. I still don’t know what the fuck that ad is trying to say.
Mouse Tolliver
@asiangrrlMN: No. Ave Satani is way scarier.
burnspbesq
This is either funny as hell or reallllllllllly creepy. Or maybe both – are those things mutually exclusive?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bgg0NebyOs
asiangrrlMN
@Mouse Tolliver: Wow, I really dug that. I found it almost erotic. Hm. I have to think about that.
burnspbesq, oh it can be both, for sure. I didn’t watch the whole video, so I can’t tell you in which camp the vid falls.
Ninerdave
@asiangrrlMN:
Damn it, now I’m going to have to watch it frame by frame until I get it. Crap, another Saturday night blown.
gnomedad
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I have to admit I was pretty naive about “interrogation techniques” when all this first went down. Especially when KSM was caught, I assumed he had information we needed and he didn’t want to give us, and so … But I assumed that he and others would at least be interrogated by people who knew what the hell they were doing. Apparently, not even that.
It occurs to me that maybe the right had a secret plan to make government so comprehensively incompetent that it would stumble into a bathtub and drown itself.
Blue Raven
@Ked:
And isn’t it originally a drinking song to boot?
Bill E Pilgrim
@asiangrrlMN:
Wait, what? He was?
What a strange blog. Hours of detours into cat movies that play like something from Beckett, pages and pages of limericks, and straight ahead no-holds-barred progressive Wingnut bashing, all done by an ex-Republican.
Utterly schizophrenic.
No wonder I like it here.
Morfydd
AsiangrrlMN:
I first heard O Fortuna as the techno version by Apotheosis (before the Orff estate threw a fit and had the single pulled), so no, I don’t find it scary. It reminds me of listening to this neat new style of music on an obscure Canadian radio station, while plotting my escape from a small town.
And I imagine singing the whole of Carmina Burana must be more fun than listening to it – after O Fortuna all the rest of it kind of blurs together for me.
DecidedFenceSitter
Yeah, until the GOP tried to make the dead rise and walk (Terry Schiavo) our dear host was a died in the wool, die hard, liberals are wimps and cowards Republican.
The site’s entirely different now, not just the host but the commenters – the conservatives have almost all totally been run off, same as the other, formerly bipartisan site that I frequent (Obsidian Wings) for what I think are the same reasons – no new talking points, old ones get debunked, so they get tired of defending them time and time again with nothing changing, where as us DFHs get to go on the attack, and each regurgitation of a defense just fills us with more righteous rage to continue the good fight™.
geg6
One of the best things about John being a former wingnut is seeing him discover the teo main things I’ve lived with as a lifelong progressive. First, that we are unimaginably diverse as a group, which leads to the inighting for which we are infamous. That diversity is a strength but also our biggest weakness and totally infuriating. And second, that Republicans are as batshit insane as we’ve always claimed, if not more. It is charming and heartening to see him make these discoveries. And, of course, gotta love the pet pics. Meanwhile, my adored Green Day is going to be on CBS Sunday Morning, the Pens kicked ass last night, and I have some delish homemade cinnamon rolls, so my day will start most beautifully.
Tim F.
Sniff.
Little Dreamer
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Conjuring the dead – they are now spewing the idea Reagan is still alive (cured of Alzheimers) and is going to come back and take over when Obama is removed because he either isn’t actually eligible for the presidency or can’t take the pressure of the job anymore.
Hahahaha!
Let’s also not forget, they make great comedians.
Little Dreamer
@DecidedFenceSitter:
Awww, I miss both* Darrell and Stormy, don’t you?
(* – not really)
Ked
@Blue Raven:
O Fortuna isn’t a drinking song, but Carmina Burana does have one helluva tavern scene in the middle, parts 11-14. XIV: In taberna quando sumus (When we are in the tavern) is particularly rollicking if performed well. (I think a lot of productions overwork the dynamic contrast, at least in recording.) In my sports fantasies, this would be my walk-in music were I a MMA fighter.
Ash Can
@burnspbesq:
I adore Carmina Burana, but every time I hear it, I feel pangs of sympathy for the poor courageous soul singing the part of the roasted swan. (And it can’t possibly be easy for the “abbott” to sing his part as though he were shitfaced, either.)
Comrade Darkness
@devopsych, hey, some of us are still busy gnawing on the bones that have been thrown our way. Unlike the 8 years before when we got kicked for even asking for a scrap, it feels like a whole new household order.
I, for one, lacking any more bones will start biting ankles.
Brachiator
@geg6:
I don’t think you have to worry about large numbers of women making the connection, largely because the commercial — or whatever it is — is so confused that it doesn’t make any logical connections at all.
As TimF notes, it’s downright funny that the people who put this crap together have no idea what the Bond opening really represents. And, sad to say, most people in their 30s or so have never seen the Connery Bonds, and so aren’t likely to make much of a connection between the mangled images and any political message, let alone a perceived insult to women.
Yutsano
*flexing my music degree muscles*
.
Carmina Burana is in fact based on a collection of texts collected from a medieval monastery in Germany. They are believed to have been written some time in the 14th Century and run from the aescetic to the profane in nature. Apparently if you wanted a life in that day and age you became a monk! Anyway O Fortuna is basically about the fickle fate of fortune. Whoever said it is a bitch to sing OH YEAH BABY but it is an awesome piece of music. It extends over an hour in its entirety and is in fifteen different parts. Orff must have like screeching because some of it is rather stratospheric!